On Michael Pollan's new Netflix show "Cooked," he gets to the bottom of why we're spending less time in the kitchen than ever.

Remember when making dinner didn't entail pulling out an app, sorting by rating, filtering by cuisine, and Adding to Bag for checkout and delivery? So does Michael Pollan, the activist author behind blockbuster food books like Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food—and he wants to bring that pre-delivery world back.

In his book, Cooked, Pollan sounds the alarm that Americans not only cook less than people anywhere else in the world, but we, on average, spend only 27 minutes a day preparing food, compared to 60 minutes in 1965. How exactly did we get here? And what's to be done? Pollan lays it all out in his new four-part Netflix docu-series, Cooked, which premieres on Feburary 19 and spotlights labor-intensive cooking processes all over the world to inspire us to get back into the kitchen. Exclusive clip below:

The series is broken down into four parts corresponding to the four classical elements—Earth, Wind (or Air, here), Fire, and Water. Each episode's elemental theme corresponds to a specific slower style of preparing and eating food, particularly those anchored by long, labor-intensive processes: kneading fresh bread made from a sourdough starter, fermenting and curing, braising. If only we could recalibrate our expectations of what food is (and could be) and how long it should take to land on our plates, we'd be more likely to put time and energy into making it, he argues.

But there are forces working against us.

Cooking is now optional; we don't need to spend time in the kitchen to feed ourselves. And preparing food takes time. Or at least that's the myth that big food industry wants to perpetuate, according to Pollan.

Courtesy of Netflix

In the "Fire" episode of Cooked, the Aborigines restored their diets by going back to traditional cooking methods. Still courtesy of Netflix/Cooked

He traces the shift to supply, rather than exclusively pinning it on demand—that is, women leaving the kitchen to join the workforce in the mid 1900s. Food companies that had been profitable during WWII saw how profitable instant, convenient, and processed food could be.

The companies put ad dollars behind it. Pollan singles out a vintage KFC ad with the tagline "Make Tonight Mother's Day" and copy that reads "Do it for Mother's sake. We fix Sunday dinner 7 days a week," as amplifying any feelings of drudgery and panic many homemakers (namely, women) associated with being marooned in the kitchen. According to Pollan, the big food companies basically stepped in and said, "Stop arguing. We've got you covered. We'll do the cooking," boosting processed food as modern and cool. A half century later, "We let restaurants cook for us, or buy home meal replacements, prepared foods from supermarkets, and we watch the process on television. Cooking has become highly mediated and removed from daily life for many of us," Pollan said in an interview with producers from the series. It's, ironically, why many of us spend more time watching cooking shows like Pollan's than actually turning on a stove or building a soup layer by layer.

Courtesy of Netflix

Pollan cooks his way through Cooked, here with slow-way bread. Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Cooked

As much as we all want to eat better-tasting food that's healthier for us and the environment, "People are starting to realize that unless you cook, you can't control your diet, and you're ceding control of the important elements of your life to corporations that really don't care about your health," said Pollan. And if people don't start to cook, the alternative, sustainable food system we rally behind may result in nothing more than a par-baked, frozen dream we can order online.